Building a Better
Food System

Our food is responsibly-sourced by farmers who pour their hearts and souls into everything they do.

My family’s been here for 100 years. My grandparents moved here 1916. I was born and raised right here on the farm. We had a dairy farm when I was a little boy. For the last 15 years, my wife, Amy, and I have transitioned the farm over to raising grass-fed beef, pasture-raised hogs. Trying to raise animals in a more environmentally friendly, humane way.

One of my most fondest memories is watching my grandfather bake. We were like the real traditional village bakery in Italy.

The brick oven we had in the back of my grandparent’s house. It was a community oven. People would come and literally use our oven and bake their breads or bake their chickens or their pigs.

I think what makes Tupelo Honey special and really sets it apart is very thoughtful about where and why we purchase things.

When we’re searching for the right products and the right vendors to bring on into our family, I think that we start with a really important set of criteria.

I spend a lot of time visiting our purveyors, and I look at their facilities. I go to see where products are processed, how they’re shipped, and are they kept safe throughout the whole process.

Does that product come from a place that we can be proud to offer.

Tupelo is one of the first restaurants we ever sold to. As we grew, and a Tupelo Honey grew, we have developed and forged a partnership that I think is going to help transition agriculture to a more sustainable, humane, environmentally-friendly future.

Tupelo has really allowed us to grow. Tupelo was a new thing for us. It really allowed us to take our baking to the next level.

One of the real treats about having real partnerships with our vendors is that we get to work creatively with one another. We’re able to call them up and say, “I was thinking about some sort of brioche bun for a new breakfast sandwich, and could you make it a little more dense. Could you make it a little smaller?”

That opportunity wouldn’t be available to us if we were working with the products that everybody else already has on the market and what’s already out there.

The greatest pairing concept in the history of the world is to get the wine from the place where the cheese comes from. Get the sparkling from the place that the oyster comes from. You’re starting at one of the greatest points of pairing.

I think responsibly sourced is about knowing where your food comes from, and if we don’t have products we can stand by, we are just like everybody else.

We take the time and the effort to go all the way back to the very beginning of the supply chain and say, “that is a product that we’re proud to offer”.

Serving the Best of Every Season

We strive to provide clean, thoughtfully-sourced and local ingredients as much as possible on our Southern menus. It is of the utmost importance that animals are treated kindly and humanely, produce is harvested in-season, and that partners are considerate of the footprint they are leaving behind.

"Forever Free" of Antibiotics & Hormones

You will find dishes on our menu describing proteins as “Forever Free.” This is our way of ensuring that the majority of our proteins were raised without antibiotics or hormones.

Humanely-Raised & Sustainably-Farmed

We work with partners who respect the animals they are providing. From pasture-raised cattle to sustainably-farmed or wild-caught seafood, conscious animal welfare is high on our list of requirements!

Purveyors

From farm to the Southern table, our purveyors are the very best of the best.